Show me the money! For all the good intentions of commuters, for many going green will always come back down to brass tacks - in this case, cash. As a bootstrapping start-up entrepreneur, Victoria Atherstone knows this only too well.

After coming up with her plan in late 2006 the former ballet dancer sold her flat, moved back home to Mum and has spent the last year and a half steadily creating her green dream, while earning some cash on the side. As the sole UK distributor of her high powered electric scooters from China she's confident Urbanites + Scooters Ltd is about to make her a pretty penny.

Costing £3,499, the U+S Style bikes hit top speeds of 55 mph and are powered by the latest battery technology (Li-ion Phosphate which is used in laptops). With lifetime running costs for petrol bikes hitting an estimated £3,375 compared to £330 for electric, Atherstone is wisely pitching it as effectively a 'Buy One, Get One Free' deal.

And it's that, plus her marketing knowledge that has already secured coverage in The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, and Motor Cycle News. She's also got herself Dragons' Den's ex-panellist and School for Startups host Doug Richard, which came about when she attended one of his bootcamps, impressed and took on the marketing role for his training roadshow.

All of these factors have helped her raise a tidy sum from investment manager of Trac Scotland, Cameron Thomson. There have been setbacks too, however. She had to fire a financial advisor who told her she only needed £70,000. Her more in-depth financial planning revealed she'd need closer to £120,000, which she subsequently whittled down to £100,000. She also had investment promised, before the angel concerned disappeared amid mounting financial problems. And plans to get a Small Firms Loan Guarantee scheme loan evaporated.

The time that elapsed enabled Atherstone to develop her plan and build her profile in the sector. She is a committee member of the Green Transport Group at the House of Lords, alongside chairman Lord Laird. And she's honed in on the fleet and commercial market, rather than individuals as her main target buyers. Local authorities and transition or eco-towns also look set to promise sales. So despite incorporating in January 2008 with a view to getting her first sales in three months later, she's only now readying to make her first sales. Nevertheless, her bootstrapping approach has royally paid off, requiring her to hit a fairly modest target. "I need to sell 160 in the first year to be profitable," she shares.

The presence of Richard on her board has also accelerated her thinking, with her business plan shifting focus from a response to the globe's environmental woes to what she can do for her customer. "I'd used business plans from websites which I thought were brilliant. They're not relevant to business though. If more people had Doug advising they'd be a lot better off." Her 80-page document has shrunk to 35 with a appendix full of the extra detail. She also utilised a free resource from the London Development Agency to get her hands on all the contact details and financial information of scooter distribution companies in the Capital, helping to ensure she partners with the right retailers.

Atherstone's obviously not the first to sell electric scooters, so how will she compare to the competition? She's predictably bullish. "Most competitors have lead / acid batteries. We have lithium ion phosphate." She also details the speeds, costs and mile ranges of the other players, seemingly highlighting an undeniable advantage. And with strong partnerships with the likes of charging bay company Elektromotive.com which will soon provide 500 bays across London she's got good reason to believe. That and the 43 companies that have already expressed an interest. Just the sales to go then!

Formed a year ago when ‘citizen journalism’ sites and services were popping up all over the place, newspepper soon failed. But one day, someone at an event asked founder Hermione Way how much the company charged for video services, and something clicked. ‘We’re a new media company giving apprenticeships to students in media. This way, corporations are able to get cheap media and fulfil a corporate social responsibility at the same time...those are the reasons that people choose us.’ Newspepper was reborn in January this year.

Way recently completed a degree in journalism, but found there was a lack of paid work experience for graduates. Unlike in other sectors, media and journalism graduates are often expected to work for large corporations for free, just to get a foot in the door. On top of that, Way feels that graduates are not fully developed. ‘The education system in Britain is so out of date: to be a modern journalist you have to be able to do everything, from writing to podcasts and video. I just finished a journalism course this year and had only been doing text. To be expected to go out into the modern world is just ridiculous.’

The answer to this is Newspepper – students with broadcast skills but not so much in the way of a C.V. are hired by the company, who in turn provide production services to companies who want to get a good deal, and a good night’s sleep. ‘We don’t pay loads; they get the same as they would in a bar or a shop’, says Way. ‘But even though it’s cheap we can still afford to pay our students. Because it’s for the web it doesn’t have to be shot in high definition or anything like that.’ And already companies are finding that the huge savings they can make mean it’s more than worth putting up with ‘mere’ students.

Way is quick to stress that older brother Ben, well-known as one of Britain’s top young entrepreneurs, provides great mentoring advice in his capacity as advisor, but not the financial support that one might assume. Way used her student loan after her second year of university, then pitched to Michael Smith, one of newspepper’s non-executive directors, who put in a further £2000. ‘And the first thing I got was a second hand camera’, she laughs.

But with citizen journalism sites a dime a dozen, Newspepper appears to have hit on a key factor that will drive it forward- a clear source of revenue.

“After transforming the DVD rental market with LOVEFiLM.com we wanted to look at other spaces where the internet offered opportunity to bring real change to the market,” says Zoopla! co-founder Alex Chesterman. “We realised that the property market was crying out for that change. That it needed a consumer champion, a must-use tool for anyone interested in residential property.”

Zoopla.co.uk went live in January 2008 and is now the fastest-growing property site in the UK, with well over 1m users in its first four months. Obviously, then, consumers thought the property market was lacking too. Zoopla! allows sellers and agents to list homes for sale for free and lets users edit information and upload photos. The Zoopla! proprietary algorithm provides free value estimates, bringing together value estimates, sold prices, homes for sale and local information in one place.

And how does the site plan to make money? Zoopla! is modelled on a number of recent successful US property sites. “Our revenue comes from advertising, lead generation for services, such as legal or surveying, and a premium data service for industry professionals.” Alex Chesterman, co-founder of LOVEFiLM.com and Simon Kain, former CTO at LOVEFiLM.com are behind Zoopla.co.uk The UK’s first community property site is a well-funded venture, with VC firm Atlas Venture investing over £1.5m to date. The site has also garnered much press attention, as well the First Tuesday “UK’s Most Promising Internet Company 2008” award in May.
by Marli Roode

“What travelguru.tv does would never get commissioned for TV,” says co-founder Cathy Bartrop. “Not in the celebrity- and reality-obsessed TV culture. Which means the entire over-50s market is under-served in terms of travel programming. That’s where we come in.”

Launched in January 2008, travelguru.tv offers packaged holidays for so-called “silver surfers”, illustrated by broadcast-quality, full-screen videos. “We film the videos from scratch so that they present the natural and unstaged product. And they are hosted by ‘gurus’, such as John Carter, Paul Gogarty and Cath Urquhart, whose knowledge of the travel industry is unrivalled.”

Travelguru.tv has partnered with specialist operators such as Bales Worldwide and Noble Caledonia, and makes its money from commissions on the sale of holiday packages. Joint marketing projects are in the pipeline to drive more traffic on the site. “We’ve had 40,000 unique visitors since January. But we’ve been staggering our work, focusing first on growing our product portfolio and turning now to marketing. So we’re happy with the way it’s gone”

Capitalising on Cathy Bartrop’s 24 years in the travel industry, travelguru.tv aims to offer trustworthy and independent information for “the discerning traveller”, and plans to expand into other specialist sectors, such as the ski, cruise, adventure and family markets.
by Marli Roode

What’s the difference between a property listing site and a property search engine? As two minutes on Globrix.com will tell you: loads. “Globrix lets you search by a broad range of features, such as wooden floors or proximity to schools,” says co-founder Daniel Lee. “We don’t charge agents to be included on the site, and we link to properties directly on the agents’ sites, rather than trying to trap the user on our site.”

The superior search experience is certainly attracting users: in May alone, the site had 450,000 unique users, and a forthcoming newspaper and radio advertising campaign will no doubt attract even more people. Globrix, which launched in January 2008, is the brainchild of two search engine experts. “When we began working on Globrix last year, Ian and I had already spent 10 years at the highest level of the search industry [at Fastsearch.com and Autonomy]. So, for us, VCs couldn’t offer anything other than money. Which is why we chose News International, a media partner, as their terms were more interesting and they have the ability to build a brand.”

People are starting to take notice of this confident start-up. “We’re talking to people about licensing our technology in the US now. Licensing is a great option for us as it means we don’t have to grow a brand globally through heavy and expensive sales and marketing activities.” Eight years of development went into Globrix’s unique deep crawling technology. “Even Google can’t aggregate property because the sites are all so different. We’ve managed to index almost every single UK estate agent’s site. The breadth and depth of our search is just better than anything else out there.”
by Marli Roode

Emile Koolstra’s w-41.com is taking social networking up another notch. Fusing fashion and technology – catchily titled techfashion – wearers of its iconic t-shirts take their favourite websites with them wherever they are.

How? Each w-41 garment has a personalised and unique logo on it. Owners download the application, then simply take a snap of it with their mobile phone, and the phone’s browser opens the site of choice, such as your blog or Facebook profile. For glorious ice-breaking potential, fellow-devotees can snap each others’ logos (which also appear on the back of the clothes) and find out something about the person they’re about to speak to.

The Dutch serial entrepreneur, outsourcing expert and geekfashion pioneer Koolstra came up with the idea in 2007 and has been taking big strides fast. “What we do on social networking sites amounts to marketing ourselves,” he says. “So w-41.com takes it further, letting you take your online identity offline and personalise it.”

Launched in the Netherlands to great media buzz, the self-funded w-41.com is now entering German and Italian markets; it is also talking to distributors in the US after a favourable mention in trendwatching.com brief. With only two full-time employees dedicated to the business, most activities are outsourced. Fortunately, Koolstra’s got previous in this area, having set up a consultancy firm that specialises in outsourcing last year. In fact, Koolstra set up three businesses last year, a Bluetooth recruitment company among them. “The timing is right to leverage the possibilities of the mobile,” he says. “Operators are really pushing the mobile internet, and with fashion and social networking added to the mix, w-41.com is offering customers a product that hasn’t been seen anywhere else.” And the tops look good too.
by Marli Roode